Bempton cliffs: wildlife photography through the seasons in celebration of the seabirds

Bempton Cliffs is a place where wonder and awe takes your breath away, where seabird stories unfold in motion, against the sculpted backdrop of chalk and sea. As a nature and wildlife photographer, this is where my pulse slows and my lens opens, because photography isn’t just what I do. It’s how I listen and connect with the world around me.

Here, dramatic 100‑metre chalk escarpments cradle the nesting grounds of gannets, puffins, razorbills, guillemots, fulmars and kittiwakes. This place is designated both a Special Protection Area and a Special Area of Conservation, where geology and life meet in an ecosystems rare and wild and so very important. Often called “seabird city” by field researchers, it overflows each breeding season, a living chaos descends to these cliffs year after year.

What draws me here is curiosity

The gentle knowing of a place allows me to feel patterns, the way light changes through the years, the rhythms of arrival and flight. The sense of knowing the place deeply, seeing it shift, year by year, season by season.

Bempton Cliffs is one of those places I feel a deep sense of belonging. Perched on the wild edge of East Yorkshire, this stretch of chalk cliff and sky carries me back to my personal roots. My grandad was born and raised in Driffield, making me a quarter Yorkshire and so I adore the drive to the cliffs and seeing all the places he shared such vivid stories about.

But it is also a place I go to feel small, to reconnect, to witness the vast devotion of the natural world. It’s a site of return. And return again. Both for me and for the birds that nest of these cliffs year after year.

As a nature and wildlife photographer, these visits are more than trips. They’re part of a long-term relationship with a place and the creatures that call it home. To see the same colony through the arc of years and seasons is to deepen your knowing, to feel the intimacy of pattern and change.

Planning your visit

If you’re thinking of going to visit Bempton, timing is everything and each species has its own unique rhythm, arriving and leaving at different times of the year. For many of the birds, they only return from life on the sea to breed and raise their young before returning to the open ocean once more.

when to go

March to August is your window for seabird abundance, when almost half a million birds nest cliff-side. From gannet flocks rising with the tide to puffin colonies framed by sunshine, the cliffs breathe life in these months. Be sure to visit between April – the middle of July if you want to see puffins, razorbills and guillemots as these birds from the Auk family are only around with more certainty in these months.

why it matters

Bempton Cliffs is a stronghold. Hosting England’s largest mainland gannet colony, it plays a vital role in the survival of vulnerable seabird populations. Seabirds are in global decline, facing threats from climate change, overfishing, plastic pollution and disease outbreaks like avian flu. Sites like Bempton provide rare, stable breeding habitat, secure ledges, abundant food offshore, and protection through conservation.

The presence of puffins, razorbills, guillemots and kittiwakes here is a sign that these cliffs are functioning as they should. Every nest built, chick fledged and adult returned from migration is a signal that, for now, this stretch of coast still offers life. That’s why it matters. Because without places like this, these birds don’t stand a chance.

Getting there

Perched along the East Yorkshire coast, the RSPB Bempton Cliffs is just a short drive from Bridlington, nestled between earth, sea and sky. The journey there already feels like a pilgrimage, winding country lanes giving way to expansive skies, the scent of salt carried inland on the wind.

The reserve itself is beautifully designed for access and immersion. Well-maintained paths guide you to a series of dramatic viewing platforms, many of them wheelchair accessible, where you’re quite literally eye-to-eye with gannets in flight and puffins shuffling along narrow ledges. The visitor centre is a warm and informative starting point, with local sightings boards, knowledgeable volunteers and bird hides that invite you to slow down and observe. It also has a great cafe, shop with carefully sourced products and toilet facilities.

For a completely different perspective, boat tours from Bridlington harbour offer a glimpse of the cliffs from below and chaos of birds on the water. Where the full scale of Bempton’s vertical drop and nesting density can truly be appreciated. From sea level, the geology is astonishing, the bird colonies monumental. Gannets plummet like arrows, guillemots form stripes on rock faces, and puffins zip low over the waves almost looking like they shouldn’t be able to fly, with their rapid flapping.

Seeing the cliffs from the water is majestic. You feel almost in communion with the wild edge, close enough to hear the sounds of the birds, yet far enough to witness the scale of life pulsing across the cliffs.

Support conservation

Every visit to Bempton Cliffs directly supports the long arc of conservation work that has taken place here for over half a century. Since 1969, the RSPB has monitored seabird populations at this site, collecting vital data that informs global understanding of seabird ecology, migration, and the mounting pressures they face.

This is not just a beautiful backdrop for photography or a bucket list stop for birders, it’s a living laboratory, where long-term records are helping scientists track changes in species behaviour, breeding success and survival rates. In recent years, this has included monitoring the devastating impact of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), which has caused significant losses in gannet colonies across the UK. Every ticket, coffee, postcard or donation helps fund this urgent work.

When you visit, you become part of this story. You’re not only witnessing the majesty of a seabird city in full chorus, you’re helping to protect it for generations to come. Conservation is not a passive act here. It’s active, ongoing and sustained by the support of everyone who steps onto the cliffs with awe in their eyes and care in their hearts.

Where to stay

If you’re planning a trip to Bempton Cliffs, there are plenty of options for places to stay, Bridlington is the closest seaside town with a wide range of hotels, guesthouses and B&Bs. Flamborough and Filey offer cosy stays and several well-equipped caravan parks nestled in nature. Many of these make great bases if you’re after sea views, pub dinners and family-friendly facilities.

But let me share a secret with you.

My favourite spot, where I return again and again, is Wold Farm Caravan and Camping Site. Tucked just a few hundred metres from the cliffs, it offers something the others can’t: private access to the coastal path, meaning you can be out with your camera before the crowds and stay for golden hour in absolute peace. There’s a gate that leads straight to the wild edge.

You wake to the sound of gannets overhead and the sea breathing below. Morning light spills across the fields, and the cliffs call before breakfast. It’s the kind of place that doesn’t just offer accommodation, it grounds you in the landscape, syncing your rhythm with the seabird city you’re here to witness.

I am fortunate to have a van and my own little self contained set up but they also have glamping options with a couple of bell tents and glamping pods that you can book too.

If you’re a photographer or birdwatcher who values proximity, quiet and deep connection to place, Wold Farm is a dream base. But sssssh, just don’t tell everyone, ok?

How photographers become storytellers through seasons

When you return to a place over many visits and many seasons, you start to realise you are in relationship with it. Your own biography becomes entwined with each visit, the surrender to flow and seeing what happens in the moment reminds you that you are not separate from nature but part of it.

Each return deepens your understanding, not just of the birds, but of the rhythm that holds them, the fierce tenderness of a gannet’s call, the quiet ache of witnessing their nests littered with ghost fishing gear and the wild hope stitched into every migration and arrival of nesting season.

Over time, the seasons unfold like chapters, and the birds become more than subjects, they become collaborators. Sometimes they let you in, revealing moments of startling intimacy. Other times they demand patience, stillness, a reminder that being present is just as important as capturing something.

Bempton has taught me that lifting a camera here is an act of devotion. You don’t just visit. You keep coming back to listen, to learn, to belong.

Top tips for seabird photography at Bempton

• Best time of day: early morning and golden-hour sunset offer soft light and calm seas.
• Gear essentials: telephoto zoom, weather-sealed body, lens hood. I shoot with the Fujifilm X-T5, Fujinon 50-140mm f2.8 and Fujinon 150-600mm f5.6-8
• Travel kit: spare batteries, spare memory cards, UV filter if you want to shoot video, wind-and-water- resistant layers, SPF.
• Composition tricks: isolate a single bird against sky, experiment with low angles, use cliff shadows to highlight patterns.

June 2017 – first contact

My first visit to Bempton was in mid-summer, when the cliffs are at their most alive. Puffins, razorbills, guillemots, kittiwakes and gannets all converge here to breed, nesting on narrow ledges in one of the most important seabird colonies in the UK. The sheer verticality of the chalk cliffs and the swirl of wings above them made it feel like stepping into another realm.

It was here I saw puffins for the first time in my life. I’ll never forget getting up at 4am to head to the cliffs for sunrise. They’re a lot smaller that I expected, their colourful bills a vibrant presence against the vast white cliff. Guillemots and razorbills clustered shoulder to shoulder, an overwhelming chorus of life.

But it was the gannets that took my breath. Their angular forms, backlit against the sky, looked prehistoric. More pterodactyl than bird. Their six-foot wingspans cleaving the wind with grace and power.

It was in that moment they became a deep fascination and my favourite seabird.

March 2023 – the aftermath of flu

Returning in early spring 2023, I found the cliffs quieter. Gannets were only just arriving, the earliest returning at the end of February from their winter migration to West Africa. I stood on the edge of the land as they returned to their partners and nesting sites.

2022 had been a devastating year. Avian flu tore through colonies across the UK, and Bempton was not spared. It was hard to stand there without feeling the grief still stitched into the ledges.

Still, the beauty endured. Barn owls quartered the fields at dusk as I started to make my way to Flamborough Head for the full moon rise. Anticrepuscular rays laced the skies in the east, a rare optical phenomenon. And then a breathtaking moment, as the full moon rose over the seal colony at North Landing, with Flamborough Head lighthouse blinking steadily behind me. That night reminded me how much light and loss can coexist. How we’re always standing in the tension between the two.

June 2023 – cliffs from sea and sky

This visit changed my perspective entirely. I sailed from Bridlington Harbour on the Yorkshire Belle, seeing Bempton from the water for the first time. The cliffs rose like a wall of memory and time. From below, the geology became a story. Fault lines, strata, the sheer magnitude of what the birds were nesting on.

We watched newly hatched guillemot chicks clinging to the wildest edges, preparing for the leap of a lifetime. It’s called ‘jumpling’ – when chicks leap from their nesting sites, unable to fly, guided only by instinct and the call of their parents. It’s a moment that encapsulates everything I love about photographing wildlife, that intersection of vulnerability and strength, the rhythm of cycles older than we can imagine.

October 2024 – the season’s close

The cliffs were quieter, yet no less stirring. Most of the gannets had fledged. A few older chicks remained, stretching their wings, hesitating at the precipice. You could feel the energy shift – the frenzy of summer giving way to the hush of autumn.

A special visit too, I was travelling for a brand shoot and my parents happened to be visiting the area too. So we met for a stroll at Bempton Cliffs together. It was a joy to share this beautiful place with them!

And then, a moment of luck. A shrike appeared in the car park, a rare passage migrant. As a photographer, your eye is always scanning, your awareness open to the unplanned. That encounter felt like a gift.

May 2025 – nest builders and aurora

I returned just as the cliffs were alive again, ‘en route’ to a couple of weeks in Scotland. Gannets raked the cliff tops with their beaks. Gathering grass for their nests, reinforcing the same sites they’ve used for years. I could have watched them for hours. Their devotion to each other, to their young, is very humbling to witness.

A surprise encounter with a barn owl and short-eared owl hunting the same patch of grassland took my breath away. Both species gliding low and silent over the clifftops – it felt like a scene from another time.

And then, as if nature hadn’t already given me enough – the aurora. On both nights I stayed, I watched the northern lights shimmer over the sea. Rays visible to the naked eye, dancing above a perfect dark patch of ocean. That kind of alignment – gannets by day, aurora by night – is the kind of wild grace I live for.

August 2025 – the guga and the dolphins

This latest visit to Bempton Cliffs was a culmination of the entire season. The guga – gannet chicks – were huge now. Downy and perched like royalty on their nests, waiting for the call to fledge. It was moving to see the very eggs I’d witnessed in May now transformed into these ready, ruffled young birds. Parents preened, guarded, fed them – returning from long foraging trips to regurgitate food supporting their young.

At sunrise, I took to the water again, this time to witness something really special – the gannets diving – the conditions were perfect. Flat seas, pastel skies, and that unmistakable plunge, wings folded, piercing the water like arrows.

I spent the day on the cliffs and at sunset, one final gift. Dolphins, visible from the clifftops, travelling south toward Flamborough Head. Magic doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Why this matters

This is what devotion looks like. To return again and again, not just to photograph but to witness and feel the changes. Building a relationship with a place. As a wildlife photographer, I believe this is where the deepest work begins. In that long intimacy with a landscape, a species, a story. Bempton Cliffs is not just a site of beauty. It’s a space of learning. Of grief. Of joy. It’s taught me how to connect more deeply with the things I love the most. The things that bring me back to myself.

And as someone ¼ East Yorkshire – with my grandfather born and raised in Driffield – every visit feels like a homecoming.

A story stitched by returning

Every visit to Bempton Cliffs marks a different chapter in my story as a wildlife photographer. Not for gallery walls or social buzz, though exhibitions do grow. But because I choose to come back. I choose to show up in seasons and stand still as wings fill air, light cascades across cliffs, and cycles of life flow in front of my eyes.

If you’re looking for images made with attention, presence and continuity, stories, not just photos, then we might be in alignment and I’d love to hear from you. Get in touch here.